


Nothing to Lose

by CaptainSaku



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Gen, Guest appearance by Shepard, You will probably be sad and I'm not sorry, character exploration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-03
Updated: 2016-04-03
Packaged: 2018-05-30 21:39:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6441835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainSaku/pseuds/CaptainSaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Garrus is cornered, trapped in his Headquarters on Omega station. Tired, at what he thinks is the end of the line, his mind works as his fingers mechanically pull the trigger. These are his thoughts as he thinks he's going to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing to Lose

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! Guess who found one more ficlet in her old RP blog? That's right! Me. This was one of those prompts where people sent you a word and you had to write a ficlet based on it. The word was "Death." This is the result.

Well… this was it, then. End of the line. Garrus Vakarian had led a short life; where turians could live to a hundred and fifty, he had been lucky to make it to thirty with no more than a few bullet wounds to his name.

It was pathetic. Just look at him. He had helped save the galaxy once, at her side. He had done great things, made a name for himself… and then she had died, and with her, so had gone his common sense.

Omega, of course, had been the obvious place to go. Archangel, the locals called him. Protecting the people of Omega from the Big Bad Mercs… and earning all of their hate in the process.

Now, as he looked down on the bridge through the scope of his trusty Mantis, cornered, tired, and with nowhere to run, he realized that he had nothing left to lose. Nothing left to live for.

He was a disappointment to his father; he had quit C-Sec because it had made him miserable, given up on training to become a Spectre because the red tape involved was just as bad, if not worse, as the one he had had to get through working in C-Sec Investigations. His sister hated him, or almost so; he was the vanishing brother, the absent sibling who pulled a disappearing act when he was needed the most. Solana needed him, needed his support and his help to take care of mom… instead, he was living on Omega, playing hero and almost never contacting his family. As for his mother… Spirits, _mom_ … she had been diagnosed with Corpalis syndrome, and her state was rapidly deteriorating. He hadn’t seen her in so long… if he had one regret, it would be that. Mom. He was sorry. So damn _sorry_.

Shepard was gone now. Shepard, his best damn friend in the entire damn galaxy, and probably one of the few people, if not the only one, he considered real friends… gone. Taken from him during some Alliance mission. To think that he would never see her again, never hear another one of her terrible jokes, never again be victim to her terrible driving…

And as though that wasn’t enough, just when he had thought that things were looking up, that perhaps it could get better… he had lost ten friends to a traitor, ten friends that he would now never see avenged, not by the look of things.

He had failed. He had failed them all, one by one. He had disappointed his dad, angered his sister, abandoned his mother; he had promised Shepard that he would always have her six, but when it counted, he hadn’t been there, he hadn’t been able to _save_ her; he had gathered a team of men, men who trusted him, men who followed him to where he led… and he had led them to their deaths.

So what was there left for him but death? He had nothing left to lose but his life, and his life, at that moment, was worth damn little. But he would at least take with him as many of these bastards as he could possibly take down. He had to hold out, for as long as possible; he _would_ hold out.

A flash of red caught his eye; he swiveled back to where it had been. Could it be?

No, it was impossible. She was dead. Shepard was dead, he had heard from Anderson himself, it couldn’t be…

Maybe he had gone mad. He had finally lost whatever sanity he had left. He was hungry, he was tired—exhausted, really,—he had been at this for days, just him against the mercs, and he had _finally_ lost it. Honestly, he was surprised it hadn’t happened earlier.

Heh, she even had a damn visor like the one he used. A poor choice of model; his brain was slipping up on the details, it seemed.

But if he was going to go out… hell, the company was appreciated. Was she a figment of his imagination? An angel come to fetch him?

She dropped a man, two, three, kicked fourth to the ground and shot him, too. A hurricane and a force to be reckoned with, even in death. Why was she accompanied by two more humans? If this was a hallucination, it was a damn good one. He didn’t even recall pulling the trigger to kill the assholes the mercs kept funneling down the bridge.

… no. She was real. Really, actually real. He could feel it. He could _see_ it. The way she moved, the gestures, the way she gave orders. Shepard was real; she was _alive_.

It wasn’t over yet. He could still make it out of this one. He wasn’t dead and he _did_ have something to lose.

Showtime.


End file.
